IT IS called the Long Prayer, sometimes the High Priestly prayer, words of the Lord Jesus to God the Father.  The other Gospels report that Jesus rose early and went out to pray, the content is private.  St John gives us that content in detail.  They are sparse, John is expansive.

   Perhaps not surprising, much of Jesus praying is about us and for us, disciples, then the church, for us, on our behalf.  The Lord beseeching God to protect and look out for us.  "I am asking on their behalf" Jesus prays, I ask You to protect them, that they stay in the world not escape, stay, "protected".  Their need? those disciples, the church: they will be "hated".  I have not been hated much in my time; ignored, ridiculed, dismissed, but hated?  Not so much.

   Others have been hated for their believing,  their not believing, their believing different, "hated" for that.  Strong  language.  Nelson Mandela, Martin King, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jeanne d'arc, and not just by the secular world but by the religious world too, "hated".  Opening the door into this first week of Lent I do well to remember those for whom believing was not casual, comfortable or complimentary. Jesus himself was one of those:  hated.  He understood the need of this prayer.

John Condon